Edward Fitzpatrick: DePetro boycott reaching a boil

Sunday

By my count, the only politicians still willing to appear on John DePetro’s WPRO talk-radio show are Chris Young, Kara Russo Young and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

By my count, the only politicians still willing to appear on John DePetro’s WPRO talk-radio show are Chris Young, Kara Russo Young and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

I’m kidding (the Youngs just had a baby, so they’re probably busy). But Rhode Island’s public-employee unions are making a serious attempt to drive DePetro off the air.

On Sept. 27, union members protested outside a women-themed fundraiser for General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo, who led the pension overhaul that unions are trying to overturn in court. Protesters shouted, “Gina’s a crook; she cooked the books.” On the air, DePetro referred to female protesters as “cockroaches” and “union hags,” saying, “There’s another word I’d like to use … it begins with a W and an H and an O and an R and an E and an S.”

Unions responded with a B-O-Y-C-O-T-T. Jewelry maker Alex and Ani refused to go along. But as the “For Our Daughters” website shows, at least 84 elected officials and candidates — ranging from Governor Chafee to Burrillville School Committee member Mark Brizard — have agreed “not to go on any WPRO talk show until WPRO ends their relationship with John DePetro.”

DePetro, who has not been on the air in weeks, called his own show to apologize. And an online petition drive rose to his defense, saying: “John DePetro is under attack by a paid organized union smear campaign designed to silence his vocal criticism. Do not allow politicians and unions to suppress free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment!”

Well, you don’t have to watch “Duck Dynasty” to be interested in a bitter battle over offensive comments and the First Amendment.

Personally, I wouldn’t shed a tear if I never heard DePetro’s brand of bile and vile again. In Massachusetts, he used a gay slur in referring to the Turnpike Authority chairman. In Rhode Island, he said illegal immigrants “scattered like cockroaches when you shine a light on them.” The public discourse is coarse enough without comments like those.

But let’s also recognize that DePetro has been highly critical of the unions and many of the politicians that now want WPRO to pull the plug on his show. While union leaders and politicians might be sincerely outraged, it can also be true that a successful boycott would silence one of their loudest, harshest critics. And speech is only free if there is freedom for the speech we hate.

So are DePetro’s First Amendment rights being trampled? “No,” said Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University journalism professor. “If there is a First Amendment right to have a talk show, I guess I ought to ask for mine. When people call for a boycott or to get someone fired, they are exercising their First Amendments rights, as well.”

Kennedy agreed with the need to maintain freedom for the speech we hate. But, he said, “DePetro has all the right in the world to get a WordPress account and start blogging away and calling people whatever he wants to call them. If WPRO thinks keeping him on the air is not in line with their business interests, they’re under no First Amendment obligation to keep him on.”

When politicians back a boycott, “you are putting a bit of the weight of the government behind it,” Kennedy said. But local politicians haven’t gone as far as New Hampshire’s House speaker, who barred two Concord Monitor reporters from a 2012 news conference because an editorial cartoon had depicted him with a Hitler moustache. If an elected official “had a news conference and didn’t let DePetro or anyone from WPRO in, they’d be violating the Constitution,” he said. “But that is not what we are talking about.”

What we are talking about is “a classic case of community censorship, which is different from government censorship,” New England First Amendment Coalition executive director Rosanna Cavanagh said. “It’s the community saying: we are not going to go on your show or advertise on your show because we don’t want our brand associated with someone calling working women whores.”

Justin Katz, managing editor of the conservative blog Anchor Rising-Ocean State Current, said elected officials are not acting in their private capacities.

“That would be the case were they boycotting WPRO as listeners and encouraging their fellow Rhode Islanders to do the same,” said Katz (speaking for himself, not the blog). “This is public officials abusing their privilege and responsibility to keep the public informed in an attempt to starve a private business of the content that constitutes its product. They have a right to interpret their responsibilities so as to allow that. But it isn’t right, and Rhode Islanders should consider it evidence that they aren’t fit for public office.”

The boycott could have a chilling effect, Katz said. “It sends a signal down the line to talk show hosts — or me or you — that if you are thinking of saying anything close to the nebulous line of what’s not sayable, you might be better off softening your criticism or even going with a different topic altogether.”

Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director the National Education Association Rhode Island, which helped organize the boycott, said DePetro has a right to say what he said. “And those who were offended by that have a First Amendment right to say what they’re saying, including calling for a boycott and calling for his removal,” he said. “The ironic thing is DePetro has twice called for my resignation. Once he encouraged his listeners to call our office. It says something about being hoisted on your own petard, living in glass houses or all bullies turn out to be cowards.”

This isn’t DePetro’s first offense, Walsh said, noting that a Boston radio station fired DePetro after he called a gubernatorial candidate “a fat lesbian.” And he said, “If you wrote a column saying protesters were hags and whores, you’d probably be out of work.”

David A. Logan, dean of the Roger Williams University School of Law, said calling someone you disagree with a whore is “completely out of bounds.” But Logan, who writes about the First Amendment, cited Anthony Lewis’ book “Freedom for the Thought We Hate,” saying, “The bedrock idea is that the way you fight bad speech is with good speech. Freedom for the idea you hate is a central assumption for how this democracy operates.” So if DePetro says something offensive, “take it to him — go on his show and prove him a mudslinger,” he said. “Isn’t the real test of the rigor of ideas to sit across from someone and out-argue them?”

Former WPRO talk-show host Mary Ann Sorrentino said politicians are jumping on the boycott bandwagon partly because they want union support in the 2014 elections, but the real test is whether they’ll withhold campaign ads if DePetro stays on the air. “They are going to waffle, because their commitment to women is not as strong as their commitment to getting elected,” she said.

Sorrentino said she referred to politicians as “whores” on the air and never received negative feedback. But she said, “The difference is, I was not talking about one oppressed group and denigrating it. I was doing a caricature of the general population’s perception of politicians.”

Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said talk-show hosts are often hired to be provocative. “Live by the sword, die by the sword. If the people who hired them think they’ve crossed the line — that’s show biz,” he said. “On the other hand, you don’t want an atmosphere where no one can say anything for fear of offending. That’s not good for free speech.”

If the government was pulling WPRO’s broadcast license, that would be a clear-cut constitutional issue, but people have a right to decide whether to appear on a show, Brown said. While “it starts to get dicey when government officials can be perceived as exerting pressure on an entity engaging in free speech, there’s nothing simple about any of this,” he said. “It’s a lot of people trying to make decisions in the boiling pot of freedom of speech.”

The question is: who is going to get burned?

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